Sunday, January 13, 2013

In the
Goddess-worshipping nation of India, a gang rape took place last month. On the
night of 16th December 2012, a paramedical student, Jyoti Singh Pandey
(pseudonym Damini) and her friend after watching a movie boarded a bus in South
Delhi, when they were beaten by a group of six males (5 adults, 1 minor), after
which the female victim was raped.

When her
friend tried to intervene, he was gagged and then hit mercilessly with an iron
rod. Five men then hit the woman with the same rod and gang-raped her while the
driver kept the bus moving. At about 11 p.m., the couple was thrown semi-naked
onto the road. A passer-by phoned the police who collected the couple and
moved the pair to the hospital. The girl had been hit with the iron rod for
nearly forty five minutes.

“It appears
to be that a rod was inserted into her and it was pulled out with so much force
that the act brought out her intestines… That is probably the only thing that
explains such severe damage to her intestines,” said a doctor at Safdarjung
Hospital where the victim was being treated before being shifted to the Mount
Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore where she breathed her last.

When news of
the rape went viral, the first questions asked were not ‘Who could commit such
a violent and inhumane act?’ or ‘How did the offenders manage to escape?’ but
instead

- What was
the girl wearing?
- Why was she out post 9 p.m. in the night?
- Why was she alone with a boy?

Spiritual
guru Asaram
Bapu remarked, "Only 5-6 people
are not the culprits. The victim is as guilty as her rapists... She should have
called the culprits brothers and begged before them to stop... This could have
saved her dignity and life. Can one hand clap? I don't think so".
According to media reports, the self-proclaimed godman further said that he is
against harsher punishments for the accused as the law could be misutilised.

There are
pictures of Dimini floating on the internet where she is dressed in a
sleeveless blouse and a sari and people have commented saying ‘Look at the
clothes she’s wearing. She’s inviting men to stare at her and to commit such
acts’. So apparently wearing sleeveless or not calling your rapists ‘brother’ justifies
rape – what a perfectly logical and rational argument!

We live in a
society where daughters are asked not to get raped. As if it were an
option they have the discretion of avoiding. We are told to hide our faces in
shame, if we were to be abused, eve-teased, harassed and sweared at. It
is “culture” to be tolerant and toil away as a woman, as it is testimony to
your femininity. And this is equally applicable to Pakistan as it is to
India, if not more.

Something an
acquaintance posted on Facebook got me thinking. He wrote, ‘I'm very curious to
learn what course of justice people on my friend's list think should be served
to tried and convicted rapists. In light of the recent gang rape in Delhi,
which is fast becoming a watershed rape case in India, what shall be done
with/to/about perpetrators?

I'm
addressing everyone, but women in particular, seeing as it is women, globally,
who bear the brunt of this assault on their bodies and person.

Capital
punishment? Chemical castration? I hear both these options are being considered
and propositioned in the Delhi case. There are lawyers who are going as far as
to say they won't represent the accused. I myself am inclined to feel that
criminals so depraved should be denied the right to life and liberty.’

Really, what
can be a befitting punishment for a crime this heinous? I feel, even the death
penalty falls short for a grotesque act of this magnitude. The objections
against capital punishment are plentiful and relevant. Capital punishment is
barbaric and cruel. It is inhuman and the mark of repressive, bloodthirsty
societies. Countries around the world are looking to do away with it,
preferring to focus on rehabilitation, treatment or simply life in prison. No
crime warrants human annihilation. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Violence to
repay violence is morally indefensible. The poor get the scaffold, but the rich
escape punishment. And what if you convict and execute the wrong man?

Let us
consider the flip side of the coin.

The laws
against rape in India are inadequate to the point of being shameful. If a man
rapes his wife, he faces no more than two years in jail. Others face
comparatively little time in prison. The women, meanwhile, could face ostracism
from their families and villages, scorn from the people around them, and
possibly death at the hands of their own family, in the name of ‘honour’. Swift
and harsh penalties against rapists, including the death penalty, would prevent
people from seeing the crime as just one more infraction to overcome.

The laws are
inadequate also because of the definition of rape. Section 375 of the Indian
Penal Code specifies that sexual intercourse comprises rape. What about
fingers? Fists? Bottles? Iron rods? Broomsticks? All of these have penetrated
women and men in acts of violent aggression. Are these not rape? Are these not
enough to cause injury or death? They do constitute rape, and they are enough
to cause injury or death. This kind of assault should include the death penalty
as a government reprisal.

Finally,
assaults like the one on the bus are enough to leave the victim as good as
dead, psychologically and physically. The victim does not have to die to justify a
penalty of death. India allows death penalty for other non-lethal crimes:
large-scale narcotics trafficking and treason are enough to get the noose. But
rape – the ultimate mental and psychological violation of another human being –
is not? The death penalty should be considered because of the severity and
callousness of the crime committed. The barbarity of what the men allegedly did
to Damini lies in the intent to defile her, not just the way that they did it.

India and
Pakistan are countries where girls are neither safe inside the womb nor
outside. The patriarchal animal we call society needs to be castrated and the
most severe form of punishment must be meted out in order to deter others from
ever committing such atrocities in the future.